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I think, showing the taxes separately is a very good idea in principle, so that you know how much tax you are paying. I usually hate the fact that I can not see

I think, showing the taxes separately is a very good idea in principle, so that you know how much tax you are paying. I usually hate the fact that I can not see how much tax I am paying, although, in Germany, the amount of tax is shown in the checkout pages.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
The question is, does the tax matter so much it's worth putting it on every price sticker? I'd argue no - it's not like you can opt to not pay it. I assume your sales tax works like ours (Poland), i.e. per product/service category, so it's also not like you can buy a substitute product with lower tax. I like the solution we have - price stickers have full price, and printed receipts carry tax breakdown.
- patates 6y ago
  It's the same here in Germany as well, was also the same in Greece and Turkey. I guess the whole Europe is like this, if not everywhere except the US :)
- michaelt 6y ago
  Bizarre though it may sound, some politicians in America are in favour of badly designed tax systems, for anti-tax reasons. By making tax as difficult as possible, they recruit supporters for their anti-tax stance, and they can claim they're delivering on their anti-tax policy by 'making the system collapse under its own weight' or 'making everyone aware of how much tax they're paying' and they can allow loopholes and fraud opportunities and they can collect donations from tax preparation companies.
- sofixa 6y ago
  > The question is, does the tax matter so much it's worth putting it on every price sticker Especially considering the fact that usually there are 2-3 rates tops, so one can easily remember that 5-10-20% of what they pay goes to the country coffers depending on the product being bought.
- tekknik 6y ago
  I can think of at least one reason where tax calculated on the final total vs each price is better (for the consumer), rounding. With tax calculated on the final total, you pay at most $0.01 extra in rounding “errors”. However with tax calculated on each price you pay at most number of items times $0.01, which is more and could add up over time. I personally want to give the gov as little of my money as possible.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    That depends on whether they're rounding, or taking a floor or ceiling :). With proper rounding, it's a wash. I just did some back-of-the-dev-console calculations on a random groceries receipt I found on my desk, and I discovered that if the tax was calculated per item, I'd pay 0.01PLN less of it! Regardless of the rounding method, the fair way is to sum up purchases and compute tax on the total, precisely to minimize the loss of precision on rounding. Curiously, as far as I understand the Polish tax code (IANAL), the choice of the method to use is actually given to the vendor! The law recommends[0] that you calculate the tax by multiplying the rate with the total taxable amount, but also allows[1] the seller to choose to calculate per-item tax, and sum that. In both cases, mathematical rounding (half-up) is used[2]. But in practice, there's little to no difference unless you're doing a single purchase of a lot of items with weird pricing bias. -- [0] - Dz.U.2020.0.106 t.j. - Ustawa z dnia 11 marca 2004 r. o podatku od towarów i usług, art. 106e., ust. 7. [1] - ibid., ust. 10. [2] - ibid., ust. 11.
    - tekknik 6y ago
      > That depends on whether they're rounding, or taking a floor or ceiling :). With proper rounding, it's a wash. Agreed! If they are actually rounding it will be a statistical wash. > Regardless of the rounding method, the fair way is to sum up purchases and compute tax on the total, precisely to minimize the loss of precision on rounding. Again, agreed, this is why we do it this way in the US. > Curiously, as far as I understand the Polish tax code (IANAL), the choice of the method to use is actually given to the vendor! The law recommends[0] that you calculate the tax by multiplying the rate with the total taxable amount, but also allows[1] the seller to choose to calculate per-item tax, and sum that. In both cases, mathematical rounding (half-up) is used[2]. US tax code, at least as far as income taxes go, uses the same rounding method (nearest decimal) however sales tax is can be quite a bit more complicated [1]. Also somewhat related, we quote our fuel prices to 3 decimals. [1] - https://blog.taxjar.com/rounding-issues-sales-tax-returns/ https://blog.taxjar.com/rounding-issues-sales-tax-returns/
daemin 6y ago
There are a few details with that: Does the sticker have to show all taxes or just the sales tax/GST/VAT? I know that pretty much every country in the world has an alcohol tax that is applied to things like wine. So should the sticker also include that? In the USA they have a particular hatred of making tax easier to pay. There's a political affiliation whose goal is to make filing a tax return harder and more complicated to do so that people will complain more about it and hate the process. So that has created the tax return filing industry and associated lobby groups. So having sales tax need to be applied on top fits within this world view. But yes I completely agree that the sticker price should include what you actually end up paying for that item. I also like it in some countries where there's a unit or weight cost with the item, so you can more easily compare different branded products. Though they usually make this number comically small on the price tag to make it harder to compare.
- tekknik 6y ago
  > In the USA they have a particular hatred of making tax easier to pay. There's a political affiliation whose goal is to make filing a tax return harder and more complicated to do so that people will complain more about it and hate the process. So that has created the tax return filing industry and associated lobby groups. So having sales tax need to be applied on top fits within this world view. Which political affiliation and what gives you this idea?
  - daemin 6y ago
    There's been a few articles here on HN relating to free filing and automatic returns and how the tax filing industry is fighting it. One name that popped up after a quick search inside a long article was Grover Norquist. From his Wikipedia entry he is part of a political association which wants to prevent any rise in taxes. From another article I read long ago it was mentioned that this includes preventing automatic filing since the government could introduce new taxes without people knowing.
    - tekknik 6y ago
      Ah so it's not actually this: > In the USA they have a particular hatred of making tax easier to pay. There's a political affiliation whose goal is to make filing a tax return harder and more complicated to do so that people will complain more about it and hate the process. So that has created the tax return filing industry and associated lobby groups. So having sales tax need to be applied on top fits within this world view. It's actually this: > since the government could introduce new taxes without people knowing Along with increasing gov size, increasing gov expense, and destroying another industry. I'm all for increased competition in tax filing software, and you're starting to see open source competition here as well. But spreading opinion as fact, and in this case in particularly, is called "misinformation" or "fake news"

TeMPOraL 6y ago

The question is, does the tax matter so much it's worth putting it on every price sticker? I'd argue no - it's not like you can opt to not pay it. I assume your sales tax works like ours (Poland), i.e. per product/service category, so it's also not like you can buy a substitute product with lower tax. I like the solution we have - price stickers have full price, and printed receipts carry tax breakdown.

patates 6y ago
It's the same here in Germany as well, was also the same in Greece and Turkey. I guess the whole Europe is like this, if not everywhere except the US :)
michaelt 6y ago
Bizarre though it may sound, some politicians in America are in favour of badly designed tax systems, for anti-tax reasons. By making tax as difficult as possible, they recruit supporters for their anti-tax stance, and they can claim they're delivering on their anti-tax policy by 'making the system collapse under its own weight' or 'making everyone aware of how much tax they're paying' and they can allow loopholes and fraud opportunities and they can collect donations from tax preparation companies.
sofixa 6y ago
> The question is, does the tax matter so much it's worth putting it on every price sticker Especially considering the fact that usually there are 2-3 rates tops, so one can easily remember that 5-10-20% of what they pay goes to the country coffers depending on the product being bought.
tekknik 6y ago
I can think of at least one reason where tax calculated on the final total vs each price is better (for the consumer), rounding. With tax calculated on the final total, you pay at most $0.01 extra in rounding “errors”. However with tax calculated on each price you pay at most number of items times $0.01, which is more and could add up over time. I personally want to give the gov as little of my money as possible.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  That depends on whether they're rounding, or taking a floor or ceiling :). With proper rounding, it's a wash. I just did some back-of-the-dev-console calculations on a random groceries receipt I found on my desk, and I discovered that if the tax was calculated per item, I'd pay 0.01PLN less of it! Regardless of the rounding method, the fair way is to sum up purchases and compute tax on the total, precisely to minimize the loss of precision on rounding. Curiously, as far as I understand the Polish tax code (IANAL), the choice of the method to use is actually given to the vendor! The law recommends[0] that you calculate the tax by multiplying the rate with the total taxable amount, but also allows[1] the seller to choose to calculate per-item tax, and sum that. In both cases, mathematical rounding (half-up) is used[2]. But in practice, there's little to no difference unless you're doing a single purchase of a lot of items with weird pricing bias. -- [0] - Dz.U.2020.0.106 t.j. - Ustawa z dnia 11 marca 2004 r. o podatku od towarów i usług, art. 106e., ust. 7. [1] - ibid., ust. 10. [2] - ibid., ust. 11.
  - tekknik 6y ago
    > That depends on whether they're rounding, or taking a floor or ceiling :). With proper rounding, it's a wash. Agreed! If they are actually rounding it will be a statistical wash. > Regardless of the rounding method, the fair way is to sum up purchases and compute tax on the total, precisely to minimize the loss of precision on rounding. Again, agreed, this is why we do it this way in the US. > Curiously, as far as I understand the Polish tax code (IANAL), the choice of the method to use is actually given to the vendor! The law recommends[0] that you calculate the tax by multiplying the rate with the total taxable amount, but also allows[1] the seller to choose to calculate per-item tax, and sum that. In both cases, mathematical rounding (half-up) is used[2]. US tax code, at least as far as income taxes go, uses the same rounding method (nearest decimal) however sales tax is can be quite a bit more complicated [1]. Also somewhat related, we quote our fuel prices to 3 decimals. [1] - https://blog.taxjar.com/rounding-issues-sales-tax-returns/ https://blog.taxjar.com/rounding-issues-sales-tax-returns/

daemin 6y ago

There are a few details with that: Does the sticker have to show all taxes or just the sales tax/GST/VAT? I know that pretty much every country in the world has an alcohol tax that is applied to things like wine. So should the sticker also include that? In the USA they have a particular hatred of making tax easier to pay. There's a political affiliation whose goal is to make filing a tax return harder and more complicated to do so that people will complain more about it and hate the process. So that has created the tax return filing industry and associated lobby groups. So having sales tax need to be applied on top fits within this world view. But yes I completely agree that the sticker price should include what you actually end up paying for that item. I also like it in some countries where there's a unit or weight cost with the item, so you can more easily compare different branded products. Though they usually make this number comically small on the price tag to make it harder to compare.

tekknik 6y ago
> In the USA they have a particular hatred of making tax easier to pay. There's a political affiliation whose goal is to make filing a tax return harder and more complicated to do so that people will complain more about it and hate the process. So that has created the tax return filing industry and associated lobby groups. So having sales tax need to be applied on top fits within this world view. Which political affiliation and what gives you this idea?
- daemin 6y ago
  There's been a few articles here on HN relating to free filing and automatic returns and how the tax filing industry is fighting it. One name that popped up after a quick search inside a long article was Grover Norquist. From his Wikipedia entry he is part of a political association which wants to prevent any rise in taxes. From another article I read long ago it was mentioned that this includes preventing automatic filing since the government could introduce new taxes without people knowing.
  - tekknik 6y ago
    Ah so it's not actually this: > In the USA they have a particular hatred of making tax easier to pay. There's a political affiliation whose goal is to make filing a tax return harder and more complicated to do so that people will complain more about it and hate the process. So that has created the tax return filing industry and associated lobby groups. So having sales tax need to be applied on top fits within this world view. It's actually this: > since the government could introduce new taxes without people knowing Along with increasing gov size, increasing gov expense, and destroying another industry. I'm all for increased competition in tax filing software, and you're starting to see open source competition here as well. But spreading opinion as fact, and in this case in particularly, is called "misinformation" or "fake news"